This might sound a little odd. Quite a lot of my prose is indeed odd to the uninitiated, but this is a post about communication, specifically integrations. I know I’m not the first to write about this but I’m on a bit of a journey right now.
You’ll probably have visited web sites integrating a chat thing into their pages. Often it’s an intrusive popup asking cheerfully if you’d like help with something anything. The only time I ever used one I was deeply unimpressed with the abilities of the person at the opposite end of the chat. It seemed to be a copy and paste session, the likes of which is these days run by ‘bots. To be honest I much prefer reading FAQs, and if my query is sufficiently complex I prefer email to a web form.
Today I installed a tiny code snippet on my GitHub Pages site. It creates an anchored button which links to a chat room I created at the GitHub.com-related third-party service, Gitter. The service offers public and private chat rooms, and logins are required, via either GitHub or Twitter. Logins make sense.
I honestly don’t expect my use of it will amount to much, and thus fully anticipate removing the code if no-one really uses it. But why?
I blog at GitHub Pages, to a blog I adapted from a prebuilt solution, composing posts on my phone in Markdown before staging, committing and pushing the post to my repository. Other people may call this ‘publishing.’
I then copy the raw Markdown and paste into a new blog post at 10Centuries.org. Being a not particularly cumbersome workflow it works well for me.
Now, notifications of posting go to 10Centuries chat, to Twitter and to Facebook, and I get occasional feedback at all three.
In a nutshell I see my social networking future at 10Centuries (10C.) It’s a peaceful haven away from the in-your-face occasional nastiness and immediacy that intrudes into Twitter and the insulated, walled garden of Facebook. There’s a web app (linked to above), and Android and iOS apps are being developed right now. Yes I know I’m being awkward here, but it is after all my prerogative!
Ok, back to the point. I’d love to be able to integrate a link to Cappuccino (10C chat) at both my GitHub Pages site and my 10C site but don’t have the skills (or, currently the vision) to implement it elegantly. So right now I’m making do with a thing that only nerds are likely to want to login to use.
I could, I suppose, create a link in the GitHub Pages site header to a page which links to 10C chat, and that might be enough.
But it won’t be. I’ve used message boxes which posted into either Disqus.com and, until recently, App.net (2 months away from closure.) I recall extremely limited use providing me with comments. It’s perfectly reasonable; Disqus is a comments-focused service and App.net is/was a limited-appeal network.
It’d be nice to have all my eggs in the one basket. But, when all is said and done, I do write for myself.
I am @bazbt3 on 10Centuries.org (Jason Irwin’s social/blogging/podcasting network.) If you want a change from the misery of the mainstream I have invite codes! Oh, I’m also on Twitter.